The Canon 7D Mark II has been talked up as a great camera for sports and bird photography.

I see at least three reasons why the 7D Mark II also excels at macro photography:

While lengthy arguments have been started over whether it’s actually better than some other (generally three times as expensive) camera in various benchmarks, it consistently performs well at high ISO, has a very quiet shutter, and impressive autofocus. All of these things strike me as being very good for macro photography.

I photograph mostly bugs, pets, and children, all of whom are easily distracted by a loud shutter, are in near constant motion, and at least in my case, aren’t located under studio lighting. In insect photography and other non still-life macro, depth of field can become such an issue that the focus plane is measured in thousandths of an inch, so the ability to raise the ISO can increase your depth of field options.

I’m going to give this camera a try. Weather permitting, I’ll post some pictures and a deeper review soon.

Jumping Spiders are a favorite subject of mine. I believe this little one is a female Eris militaris, though I’m no expert. The shot was taken in northern California on a small purple artichoke.

I didn’t have a ton of light and I was taking the shot hand held, so I used a 400 ISO, which is pretty much admitting that I was going to have to shrink the resulting image a bit to get rid of graininess. If you click the image, you can zoom in. I reduced the image size by a third after some raw processing for sharpness and noise, and I’m pretty happy with the results for a hand held, existing light (bright shade) shot. The colors are awesome and there is a lot of potential composition to work with. I cropped some off of the bottom, but I think this could be framed a lot of different ways and still work. I’ve only got so many walls, and years of fun photos to choose from, but there’s something about this one that makes me want to have a canvas print made.

A ring flash can be a great addition to any macro lens. When you think about how much less light there is hitting a single bug than there is hitting a whole mountain scene, you start to see why macro photography needs so much more light to get sharp shots. The mountains don’t move, but that bee in flight can be nothing but a blur without a flash. Traditional flashes are too far away and aren’t designed for extreme closeups.

There are quite a few options out there, or you cam make one yourself. The one pictured above is one of the most ingenious camera hacks I’ve ever seen, though it has some competition from that guy who figured out how to use a rooster as a steadycam. Rather than using LEDs or other lights that need batteries and have to be synchronized with the camera, this one uses fiber optic cables to transmit light from the flash on your camera, taking advantage of the fact that the flash is already synchronized with the camera and puts out an impressive amount of light. No extra power cords or batteries necessary, and the ring setup with 150 fiber optic cables distributes the light evenly on your subject.

This is a DIY project at the moment. If you would like to construct your own fiber optic macro ring flash, Ole Wolf has the instructions as well as more pictures of his fiber optic ring setup here, or if you don’t have time for that, amazon has a massive selection of ring flashes in prices ranging from about $30 up to around $500 for the really fancy ones, which puts them in a good price range to be a gift for your favorite macro photographer. They also have a similar product for about fifty bucks here.

Setting up your average tripod for doing macro work is like helping a giraffe with knee problems get a drink from a puddle. By the time you’ve got the whole thing set up, the light has changed, your subject has wandered off, and you couldn’t get quite the angle you wanted.

The Gorillapod has been such an amazing solution to my problems. They market it as something to wrap around trees and fences and stuff, but I prefer it just perched on the ground like a regular tripod, but with near instant setup and flexibility.

You may have even seen these in the store. My first Gorillapod was given to me by my grandmother, and like the ones in the stores it was meant for those tiny point and shoot cameras. It would fall over under the weight of my camera lens when I used it with my SLR. After a bit of research I found that they make a very nice larger model specifically to use as a tripod for SLR cameras. This Gorillapod for SLR cameras has machined aluminum sockets and holds up to 11 pounds. I’m really impressed by the feel and quality of this thing. The feet and the widest point of each socket have a firm grippy rubber that really gives me confidence that t won’t slide around, and the sockets take just the right amount of force to bend that they are adjustable without being weak. The top and the base are two separate pieces, and are sold separately or together. The Ballhead X top has a nice swivel and pan feature which adds to the flexibility, but isn’t crucial if you’re feeling thrifty.

This SLR Gorillapod is one of the few really nice camera accessories in that $80-$150 range. I highly recommend it as a nice gift for the photographer in your life. The’ve got a nice selection of them here on amazon.

I was outside on a sunny day and found a Red Back Jumping Spider hunting flies along the top of a brick wall. These little guys are curious and have excellent vision. I’ve found they have little fear of people, unless you make sudden moves or loom too much. This is one of those spiders that with its red and black coloration immediately sends the ignorant packing with fears of black widows, which of course resemble these only in color. It would be like confusing a cow with a zebra. I’ve handled dozens of these and have only been bitten once (by a pregnant female). It made my finger a little numb for an hour or so but I had no other side effects at all.

This jumping spider was nearly full grown, and was curious enough about me to come right up to the edge of the wall and slaver for the camera. If you look in her eyes you can see my reflection, as well as the wall beneath her feet.

Why such a handsome cat should be so photo-shy is beyond me. Taking pictures of Kernal is a lot like taking pictures of most people, he starts looking shy or walks up to stand next to me as soon as he sees the camera pointed his way. The key is getting the shot set up while he is distracted and then getting the shot as soon as he takes notice.

There are times when having a good portion of the photo out of focus is desirable. In this case, the feel of the dandelions on a sunny afternoon in the background comes through strongly, but without all of the distraction it would cause the foreground if it was full of crisscrossing little details. Keeping track of your depth of field can be the difference between beautiful and distracting. Most good cameras have a depth of field preview button somewhere, on mine it is right below the lens release.

Most photographers have a few subjects that they like to shoot on a regular basis, honing their skills and always looking for a better shot; one of mine is honey bees on borage flowers. I always keep several of these plants in my garden. They bloom for quite a while, grow vigorously, and the bees love them, which is a good advertisement for any plant in my book.

I took this shot in really optimal conditions. an overcast day bright enough to cast shadows, warm enough for bees, and with little wind. I planned for the shot, finding an especially nice pair of parallel flowers and waiting for a nice bee, but I skipped the tripod and just shot by hand, which is my preference and obviously works just fine. I’ve tried taking these shots at very high shutter speed to freeze the wings, but my camera only goes up to 1/4000 which falls just short, and the wings can actually be distracting in a shot like this.

Camera settings for bee and borage:

Post Processing: I boosted the contrast enough to get the blacks black, clone stamped out a distracting dark something on the right edge, and cropped it to frame it better. I set the sharpness to 3 in the raw file, which seemed like plenty.

This is Esther. She’s a tough old bird, survivor of two raccoon attacks (she lives in a fortress now), and an all around sweet chicken. She is several years old, but still lays regularly and helps out in the garden, always underfoot. Chickens are a great addition to any garden, provided you keep them out of the most edible plants. She spends her days on snail patrol, and gets along great with the cats.

I took the shot on a sunny afternoon, sitting inside a small greenhouse and shooting through the open door. When raking a portrait of a chicken, I don’t worry much about shutter speed, and I have the lens on auto focus, because while chickens are generally perfectly still in the instant, they move in tics every second or so. As usual, I used my 60mm macro, which is perhaps even better at portraits than it is for bugs. I took about ten shots in this series, and every one of them was this sharp. Click on the picture to see it full size, the details are fun.

I believe this long spider is a log jawed orb weaver (Tetragnatha nitens).

This is one of the very first pictures I took the day I got my 60mm Macro. This spider was standing vertical, as pictured, on a round post just outside my back door. I’ve seen similar spiders that stand like this on a single stem of tall grass, but with all of their legs together.

With a macro shot this close up, it can be hard to get enough depth of field to get focus across the whole subject. The only reason this shot worked so well is that the whole spider is parallel to the plane of focus. Planning for this is one of the biggest keys of good macro photography.

I took the shot hand-held, but braced against the beam. If I were to do it again, I would likely boost the ISO to 400 in order to give myself room to boost the depth of field a couple more notches.

If you haven’t already noticed, most of this site is a review of this particular lens. It rarely leaves my camera, and for good reason, but as anyone who has spent any time with lenses knows, nothing comes without sacrifices. I’ll start with the cons so as to not waste your time if any of them are deal breakers for you.

Cons:

This is a prime lens, as in not a zoom lens, as in no zooming.

Tunnel vision. a 25° angle of view means that it pretty much sucks for landscape photography, and to take a big group portrait you have to stand back pretty far.

It is optimized for 1.6x cameras like the 20D-50D and the Digital Rebel series, which is a plus if that is what you have, but it wouldn’t function right on a full frame camera like the 5D MarkII

Hmm, well, I’m out of cons already. On to the Pros:

The lens doesn’t change length when you focus. No bumping that bug off the leaf as your lens pokes out, and it lessens the risk grit and dis-alignment.

The focusing wheel is big enough that you don’t have to hunt for it, and is built really well. It is coarse enough to not send you into mad spinning when something moves, but fine enough to get fine focus with no rattling.

Color representation and bokeh are both very nice, and you have plenty of options for depth of field.

It works well in a variety of lighting conditions.

I’ve found it to be awesome as a portrait lens as well as for small macro work.

Not too big, not too heavy.

You can practically fill the frame with a fly. Going from regular vision to looking through some lenses can be disorienting with all the change in magnification, but this 60mm lens is similar enough to my regular vision that I can take pictures with both eyes open with no disorientation, which I find handy for keeping an eye on what’s outside the frame.